Tag: wisdom

Randy Pausch, the author of The Last Lecture, was a Professor of Computer Science at the Carnegie Mellon University specialising in the design of Virtual Reality. He died from pancreatic cancer on 25 July 2008 after being diagnosed with the disease in the summer of 2006.

Randy’s book traces his life, his medical experience, giving his last lecture and his life’s lessons and achievements. His Last Lecture, given on the 18th September 2007, was videotaped and is available here. The lecture has been viewed by millions of people who admire Randy’s inspiration, insight, humour, intelligence and wisdom.

Randy, even though he was obviously dying from cancer at the time, wanted to leave a legacy for his three young children in terms of the lessons he had learned in life – often the hard way by making mistakes. Some of his insights into the way to live your life are pertinent to developing mindfulness.

Lessons on mindfulness from Randy Pausch

I can’t recall Randy talking about mindfulness in his book or his lecture, but he did have some insights and values that I think are particularly relevant to mindfulness:

Show Gratitude

Being grateful for what you have and what people have done for you is important, because it is part of growing in self-awareness and understanding how you came to achieve what you have achieved. Randy also talks about the “lost art of the thank-you note” as a timely way to express appreciation.

He went even further and decided to take his 15-member research team (working on virtual reality) to a week-long visit to Disney World in Florida. Besides enjoying the entertainment, they were also able to take in some educational activities relevant to their studies and research. He provided this expensive trip as a way to “pay it forward” his gratitude for the mentoring he received from Any van Dam.

Gratitude requires being present to notice what people have done for you and developing an appreciation mindset through gratitude meditation. Often, we are grateful, but fail to express it. Through this form of meditation, we become more aware of the opportunities to show gratitude and ways to express it.

Seeking forgiveness genuinely

There are many times when we are hurt by the words and actions of others – it is part of being human on both sides of the hurt dyad. We hurt others and they hurt us. We can’t avoid this, although as we grow in mindfulness we become more aware of their feelings and what effect our words and actions have on them.

Randy stresses the importance of seeking forgiveness genuinely – in his own words, “A bad apology is worse than no apology”. He argues that we should not apologise in such a way that we are not genuineor in a way that is designed only to obtain an apology from the other person. While hurt can be a two-way street, it does not rectify the situation to actively seek an apology from the other party – they may apologise in their own due time. If you want someone to change their behaviour, you are more likely to achieve this if you change your own behaviour first.

Forgiveness meditation helps us to develop the readiness and willingness to apologise for the hurt we cause others. In the process of this meditation, we can ask for forgiveness from others – which makes us acutely aware of the reality that we are not the only one hurting. Associated with this, is the need to also practise self-forgiveness meditation.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and learning from the inspiration of others such as Randy Pausch, we can develop the awareness and mindset that makes us willing and able to show gratitude and to genuinely seek forgiveness.

We have all hurt ourselves and other people during our lives – it’s part of being human. Unfortunately, we can carry around the associated guilt, negative self-evaluation, and sense of unworthiness that act as a dead weight holding us back and weighing us down.

Self-forgiveness and self-compassion are essential for our mental health and wellbeing and for the development of wisdom. Sometimes, the accumulated guilt for the hurts we have caused seems too great for us to tackle it. The sense of guilt and shame becomes buried deeply in our psyche as we avoid confronting the hurt we have created by our words, actions or omissions. Self-forgiveness is the way forward and the means to release ourselves from the tyranny of guilt.

However, we can often be held back by the misconceptions and unfounded beliefs we hold about forgiveness meditation. Jack Kornfield identifies three myths that get in the road of our practising self-forgiveness:

Myth 1: Forgiveness is a sign of weakness – in reality, forgiveness requires considerable courage to “confront our demons” and deal with the pain of self-discovery. The demand for courage is especially pertinent when addiction is involved.

Myth 2: Forgiveness means we are condoning the hurtful action – in fact, we often resolve never to do that hurtful action again or to avoid the situation where we are tempted to react inappropriately. If we fail to address the guilt and shame, we are held captive and are more likely to take that hurtful action again

Myth 3: Forgiveness is a quick fix – it can be far from this. Jack Kornfield recalled a mindfulness teacher that requested that he do a 5-minute forgiveness exercise 300 times over a number of months. If we undertake forgiveness meditation, we can procrastinate or fall into the trap of the opposite of forgiveness (blame, self-loathing). Sometimes self-forgiveness will involve a lot of pain, regression, diversion and ongoing effort to avoid falling back into a lack of loving kindness.

Self-forgiveness is something we have to keep working at as we go deeper into our feelings of shame and guilt and their hidden sources. Jack Kornfield suggests that self-forgiveness releases us from the burden of the past and allows us to open to our heartfelt sense of our own goodness.

As we grow in mindfulness through self-forgiveness meditation, we can gain a sense of freedom to be ourselves, a newfound self-respect and energy for kindness and compassion towards others. We will become less self-absorbed and weighed down and feel free to open up to others.

Researchers in Iran established that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) can help new mothers reduce the symptoms of postnatal depression. They counselled, however, that “regular mindfulness practice is important in maintaining balance in life”. Dr. Zindel Segal, a co-developer of MBCT, also cautions, “getting well is half the problem, staying well is the other half”. MBCT was developed as a direct response to the need to prevent relapses after depression and enables participants to sustain meditation practice.

Gail Donnan’s story of relapse after postnatal depression

Many years after suffering postnatal depression, Gail Donnan experienced a range of symptoms which tended to mirror the symptoms of postnatal depression she had experienced previously. At the time, she was having difficulty managing multiple (and sometimes conflicting) roles – mother, wife, part-time teacher of Holistic Therapies in further education.

The anxiety associated with the sense of overload brought back the symptoms she thought she had left behind – physical symptoms of lack of sleep and exhaustion; psychological symptoms of tearfulness, low self-esteem, anger, being negative and panic attacks, as everything got out of perspective.

Gail fortuitously recalled how meditation had helped her with postnatal depression and began meditating again, using her old meditation tapes. She then advanced onto meditation apps and explored brain science and nutrition.

The real breakthrough came when Gail decided to study to become a qualified Meditation Teacher – she was already qualified as a Counsellor, Teacher and Assessor. Her experience of the benefits of meditation for her own wellbeing served as a source of motivation.

She now offers a very wide range of holistic therapies and accredited courses, in association with other qualified practitioners, through two Wellbeing Studios and a Wellbeing Training Centre. The offerings include meditation classes and mindfulness coaching along with accredited courses such as a Meditation Teacher Diploma and a Mindfulness Diploma. Gail’s Facebook page details the very extensive services that are now provided. In the meantime, Gail has qualified as a Reiki Master Teacher Practitioner.

Gail’s experience of meditation and its benefits for depression and her growing conviction through training others in meditation and mindfulness, have provided the foundation for her to explore these new horizons. She is now in a position to help many other people through a wide range of related modalities.

From Depression to Creativity

Jon Kabat-Zinn, when talking about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, makes the point, “A lot of creativity comes out of the stillness of awareness, in not knowing”. He suggests that if we explore what we don’t know we are at the cutting edge of new knowledge – this has certainly been attested in Gail’s case. The calm, balance and clarity derived from meditation and mindfulness, as a practitioner and teacher, have opened up new vistas for her and created a thirst for knowledge and wisdom.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can move beyond the disabling bonds of depression and explore new horizons through new-found creativity, energy and insight.

Richardo Semler, entrepreneur and author, became well known for his ground-breaking book on the democratization of organisations. In Maverick, he describes his approach to managing his business, Semco, which involves allowing employees unprecedented autonomy in many aspects of organization life.

What is not so well known is his personal philosophy of life. His comments give some insight into his own approach to mindfulness and his perspective on idleness:

The opposite of work is idleness.But very few of us know what to do with idleness.When you look at the way that we distribute our lives in general,you realize that in the periods in which we have a lot of money,we have very little time.And then when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the health.

Semler suggests that we put off so much in life because we are so busy about the future that we cannot enjoy the present. In the process, we miss the opportunity to develop wisdom and to pursue the fundamental question of “What am I doing this for?”

And so, what we’ve done all of these years is very simple,is use the little tool, which is ask three whys in a row.Because the first why you always have a good answer for.The second why, it starts getting difficult.By the third why, you don’t really know why you’re doing what you’re doing.What I want to leave you with is the seed and the thought that maybe if you do this,you will come to the question, what for? What am I doing this for?And hopefully, as a result of that, and over time,I hope that with this, and that’s what I’m wishing you,you’ll have a much wiser future.

These comments by Richard Semler are extracts from a TED Talk that he gave in 2014, “How to run a company with (almost) no rules.” The video of this talk is embed below and the transcript is available online for those who prefer to read rather than listen.

Semler asks some fundamental questions about life and work and how we spend out time. Busyness is the greatest impediment to mindfulness – the pathway to wisdom, calm, clarity and happiness.

Postcript: I often take a short detour in the morning via the Manly Esplanade so that I can see the bay, the islands and the emergent sunrise. On the morning I watched Richardo’s video, I asked myself, “Why don’t I stop and capture the image that I see, instead of rushing back home?” And so the image in this blog post captures calmness in the spotlight of the sunrise.